Tuesday, 24 November 2009

FOR A LAUGH [a collection of 22 poems]

i) The Man Who Forgot to Breatheii) Little Fishyiii) The Dog's a Silly Thingiv) Moon and Cockv) Ted Hughes, Not: Sparrow on Icevi) Daseinvii) Toilet Poemviii) Play the Gameviiii) Themx) The C Teamxi) Jeramiah the Medieval Monkxii) Perversionxiii) Fishes in Dishesxiv) Little Birdiexv) Death and Stuffxvi) Little Cheesecake Again

xviii) Tear, Tearxviiii) A Funny Thoughtxx) Death of a Dull Catxxi) What a Man?xxii) Train Journey
i) The Man Who Forgot to Breathe
The man died because he forgot to breathe.
He said nothing in his dying breaths.
His dying breaths were none.
Breathlessly he died.
He had the death one has when one forgets to breathe.
In fact, he woke up forgetting to breathe; so he didn’t really.
I couldn’t ask him about his breathless take on life – he was dead.

I should have said: The sooner one breathes, the sooner one lives.But I didn’t. I didn’t know him.
So I wouldn’t have.
And he was dead anyway.

What a lapse of memory!
Like forgetting to eat, or forgetting to live, indeed.
A man who forgets to breathe don’t write a will, usually.

To breathe, to breathe, a lass!
To take part in life’s rich breath.
To live breathless? To live in a foreign country.

ii) Little Fishy

Oh, little fishy, what point are you?
What, exactly, do you do?
You swims a bit.
Stand stock-still.
You swims a bit more (but not too much).
And then you sit, little fishy, on your stool of water,
To think even a bit, and take in the view.
If only we could knew what went on in that shiny head.
And what you did say to the other little fishes.

I like your scaly feathers that fly you in the water.
You do not speak, but prefer to squeak from your coral perch,
High in the water. But sometime deeper down.

Outside the sea.
There be where you be.
Oh come with me, pretty little fishy, and swim down the street to your river at the bottom
Or have you forgotten?

There I’ll set you free
So you can be what you be
And see whom you want to see.
Only I did forgot that the river below is not slightly salted.
So your little life was swiftly halted…
By me… Sorry, little fishy.

iii) The Dog's a Silly Thing
The dog is a silly thing.
It eat stone and shit bricks.
It do what it told, but never more.
It wait like a patient thing for the master, long since gone.
It wait and it wait on those will come.
Or so it think.

The dog is loyal.
It loyal to almost many, but not to all.
Tell it, “Fetch.”
And it do fetch.
Tell it, “Beg.”
And it do too.
But tell it, “Speak.”
And it do nothing.

Dogs is a funny thing.
Unlike the selfish cats that plots the destruction of the not-so nimble little brown mouses.
They know nowt of their horrid habit.

If dog be man’s best friend, then man be dog’s best friend.
If that man’s got second-best friend, then him be too the dog’s second-bestest friend.
And so on to infirmity.

Dogs? Don’t we love them?
Yes we do so.
Give them a bone and they’re forever friends… or nearly so.

Dog don’t think themselves into very dark holes.
But take the moment as it be.
Not as something before the next thing.
Dogs just be.
And that’s the way, sometimes, I’d like to be -
Snug in a little world, that’s as small as the dog’s brain is tiny, too,
And very small.

v) Ted Hughes, Not: Sparrow on Ice
Sparrow lands hard on ice.
Throws off its being before the seed.
Clasps the tradition of its genetic jerk-offs.
Cat licks sweet tooth in forecast of the kill.
Death stalks sparrow from noon till dawn.
Cat grasps its calling in the heat of its pure heart.
It knows nothing of compassion’s tutelage.

Here nothing’s sacred.
Birth is a short haul for the sparrow that landed hard on the ice.
In the wider world; nothing stops.
Only one atomic life at a time.

I’ll eat you, says the stalking cat.Devour you entire. Then spit out the seeds.
No it doesn't!

I felt a poem coming out.
I squeezed and squeezed... butoh! Oh no!
Then words finally dripped, but dripped slowly,
Onto a soul-white page, down in the below.
Then dribbled down
To find abstract meanings for their popous selves.

Then I flushed the stained sheet (that stank of the best inanities)
Down the tiolet's gullet.
To coalesce, too neatly, with other such shit.

viii) Play the Game

There was an MP
Who was very silly
He told the truth to all.
Until one election day
He was made to pay
'... because truth made the Party fall.'
He did not realise
That it was lies,lies, lies
That kept his Party tall.
And from that day
He has refued to play
'The Game, by boy, that's all.'

viiii) Them

Great leaders.
Famous actors.
Saints and martyrs.
Poets and pop stars.
Heroes and heroines.
Revolutionaries...
All go to the toilet and shit.

So thrust and thrust
With all your might
Don't waste our time
Ain't got all night.

Faster and faster
We're ready to run...
Your minute's up
And here we come!

xi) Jeramiah the Medieval Monk

Jeremiah the monk
Was certainly no hunk
But he had plenty of fun, for sure.

He was big, fat and bald
And his farts did appall
All within the monastery's door.

He wore clothes well torn
And sandels ten years worn
Like St. Francis, friend of the poor.

But Jeramiah the monk
Was inclined to flunk
His daily work and prayer.

He preferred to stay
On a hot Summer's day
Lazing in his tree-top lair.

While his fellow Franciscans
Being very good Christians
Were kneeling on the floor, so bare.

xii) Perversion

We shared everything that night.
The dreams and secrets of delight.
And with desires of things untold
We journeyed through ecstasies dark and bold.
Until we came upon a pleasure
With other joys it had no measure.
It gave us frills beyond control.
Turning our souls as black as coal.

And what is this sin of which I speak?
It's licking the soles of her smelly feet.

viii) Fishes in DishesFish is exciting things.
They swims a bit.
And they thinks a bit.
They have amazing features
(Like them scaly creatures)
On which they fly through water blue and red
(As has been said by poets dead).

Their golden teeth can slaughter
All things made of water
(As much they ought to do).
For this fishes be tough -
Much more than enough.

So if you have a pet fish,
Pray to God and wish
It didn’t end in your dish.
For it be you who’s to blame
All the damn well same.

Let little fish sing and do their thing
In waters warm and wet.
They’ll swim, you can bet.
Fishes is fishy birds which swim in water high.
Of that I’ll not lie.

xiv) Little Birdie
Little bird, in little cage, flits and flitters like a flitting thing.
Time for birdseed to quench its need.
Before it gets on its flying game again.Oh little birdie, flitter for me.Show me your lovely wings.And the way that you sings.xv) Death and StuffI awoke this morning to find myself dead.
The deadness hurt a little.
I didn’t care.
I was awake to life.
Or nearly thereby be.
So to be is not to be.That is the answer.To suffer stuff and other things.

xvi) Little Cheesecake Again
Little Cheesecake is often very far high.
But also often too down.
For to be too down is to be amongst those spiders
Which creep like creepers along her creeping floor.

You see, to be alive to life is hard.
For one, you need to be awake.
That is a trick she don’t know.
But when she do; she’ll no doubt try it too.

xviii) Oh tear, tear!Those lovely little animals!
How deeply and truly I love them.
They're so much better and lovelier
Than the pigs I eat on so many occasions.
The cuteness guarantees their safety.
And my unadulterated love.

xviiii) A Funny Thought

Once upon that time, deep in the brain’s deepness,
Was a funny thought.
A very funny thought.
Small at first, but grew.
But grew and grew - like the weed it did.
It knotted him up inside itself.
Crept round its home as if it owned it.
Kept itself to himself.
Never did but hide in the inner parts of the floppy grey
Or under a synaptic bushel.
Day in, and both day out, it cried: “Me!”
Nothing more than “Me!”
It knocked on inside skull to see if he were in, when it were in.
As he was and will be from that day forward (for they never did part)
Its untrue mate.
It famished for attention.
“Think of me!” it cried.
“Think only of me.”
Until its voice echoed around each everything -
Each nook and cranny of the brain’s nether holes.
Soon there was a nothing (as only a nothing can be) but the funny thought.
And the thought was this: “No one like you, boy.
Me more than all.”

xx) Death of a Dull Cat

The cat, black and boring, always stared at the fire.
Until the fire died or was turned off.
Then off it went into tomorrow today.

At night, it had stalking feet.
A nose which sniffed fish from a mile.
Come morning, it be there, again, on the step -
Crying like a baby for food.

Last, in it came, again, to stake its place by the fire.
At which it stared, until it stared no more...
Until it be dead. Dead.

xxi) What a Man?

Was a man, who did walk as tall (tall as can be) as all the animals did too.
Had a oneness with himself… Oh, sweet yes!

Who lived in a hut underneath the everlasting twitters of the neverlasting birdies.
And overneath the critters that died under tenderless foot.
Had a twoness, too, with his beast friend, deep down in the dankest wood.
So too deep for comfort, but unnot so for – and - joy.

But not he knew the where, the when (And the why - never far behind),
Of this small happy-ever-after of his.
Lived until his heart bled black blood (and that heart was as large as his body was up)
Upon the crunching leaves Of his last-ever earth’s Autumn.

Met this man on a yesterday, because tomorrow never did come…
Until it did quite yesterday, when he so, so died!

In that past I’d “hello” on the top of my so-called “breath”
But made sure, as sure can be, not to very befriend the friendless man.
Didn’t weigh him down with pretty talk,
Of all of a nothing, such pretty talk.
Spoke when spoken to. (Never after or before).
And gloried in the silence that knocked on the door
Of his oh-so-vast and wild.

He liked it on his own.
That’s the way he liked it… on his own.
And he did so like it, On his own.
He was the man to be with, in the dark night of the stomach’s eruption
And that ever-lessening being.

He lived inside the mountains and on the smiling stars
And in-between each everything that would let him be -
That’s as good as good can be (and never an inch more!).
It was so verily good.

His life was the wild life.
A life that went up so far (but necessarily no more!),
Rather than down, deep down, to the death and the dead,
Who slept in their humble pile between himself and the living.

Out in the sky, he’d catch the trout’s full flight (ss it flew for flying’s sake),
That existed on its long tale.
And up too into the water he would snatch the bird from its nest of thorns -
Of very fine thorns.

When this man did die (and die it’ll be for us too)
He died with himself, and for himself.
Not one or a few did false tears cry.
Nor heat up the tea for the steaming belly in that waketype thing that’s oh-so-often had.
Nor did someone (or even no one) do anything that is something…
Something more than nothing less.
And this lessness of his iswas the best way to be
As was said by those unwritten books, left unwritten in the tall man’s wild
And pretty damn world… pretty damn world!